Spanish political scientist Martin Alberdi Rodriguez speaks, as always, about Europe with his frenemies and forbidden lovers Federico Giovannini and Jules Ortjens. The Italian Marxist philosopher and the Dutch local leader of pan-European party Volt rarely agree, except on the fact that we need to be speaking of Europe.
While Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his conservative-liberal party VVD won his fourth election in a row, the other victories went to radically progressive parties, like D66 and pan-European party Volt, but also to three upcoming far-right parties. Jules argues that the Dutch election results are a battlefield between conservative-nationalists and progressive-Europeanists. “All the parties who didn’t want to show their colour in that spectrum, lost seats”, he argues when talking about the Left’s failure to gain momentum. Federico respectfully disagrees: “The real problem of the Left is that it has lost its touch with its people”. How should we understand the Dutch elections? And how does this shine a light on future earthquakes in political Europe, like October’s upcoming German elections? Is this a battle between nationalists and Europeanists? Is the left once again losing? Does it even make sense to talk about left/right differences? Speaking of Europe will guide you through the messy world of Dutch politics!
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